Great Britain threatens Facebook and Twitter with sanctions

London threatens to impose sanctions on social networks Facebook and Twitter if they do not disclose information about account activity from Russia during Brexit

This is reported by The Guardian.

Facebook and Twitter gave time until January 18th to report a Russian campaign of misinformation on their platforms.

"If you can not effectively control your platform, if you ignore countermeasures, if you can not effectively monitor and block sensitive content, we will impose sanctions against you," said Damian Collins, chairman of the Digital Security Committee.

The head of the department has already appealed to companies to provide information on the impact of the RF through the Internet, but the responses were general and unsatisfactory.

According to Collins, the government has received "more explanations from journalists and scientists than from representatives of social networks."

It is not yet clear what form will be sanctioned. They predict that the government will aim for advertising on social networks, without which they will not be able to make a profit.

The information that Facebook and Twitter provided to the British authorities indicated that they received a small amount of money from Russian accounts.

In particular, Facebook said that only 97 cents were spent on advertising related to Brexit from the Russian side, and Twitter said that during this period they received $ 1,000 from the television company Russia Today.

A few days later, the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom shared the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation:

"The financial elites in the United States and Britain, which control the mainstream media, are launching a campaign aimed at keeping Facebook, Google and Twitter under strict control, as if through the use of these online resources by extremists. Russia has often fallen victim to fake news in social media. networks, but it has never restricted freedom of speech on the Internet. "

The publication reminds that in fact the Russian authorities blocked thousands of sites after Vladimir Putin's reelection in 2012.

In the United States, Facebook and Twitter conducted large-scale inquiries that revealed significant interference by the RF. Facebook has detected 470 Russian accounts and pages of so-called "Olgin's trolls," and Twitter has provided Congress with a list of 2,752 accounts that the company believes were linked to the organization.

espreso.tv  In Ukrainian/український